Heroin, pt. 1
I am a child, and the adults
are trying to explain heroin.
These are the Tamagotchi years.
The internet is inchoate.
And the adults are umming
and erming about heroin.
They are not the stewards of a
psychopharmacological lexicon.
They are bureaucrats,
and they are grieving.
I am a child, and the adults
are straining to explain
a medicine you don’t need, I guess,
but then you need it really bad.
More than food and more than sleep
and even more than family.
I am a child. I have not begun
to understand the body
as a brace of rabbits battling
over pine needles in the winter.
Or as the interwoven chutes
and funnels of a water park.
(Children splashing, lifeguards
whistling, vulgar solvents
vanishing in acid.)
I am a child. I struggle with division.
And even I can tell the adults
are yoked by secret wisdom.
Like actors bombing side by side,
like accomplices flop-sweating
in separate interrogation rooms,
there are cracks in the telling
and they’re desperate to patch them.
But it does me no good to
grapple with the grammar of
something that makes you feel better
but then it makes you feel worse
and it makes you feel better
and eventually you die.
I have not fathomed lack
nor reckoned with regret.
I have not come to know the
conscience as a turning prism.
And I don’t know what to picture
when I picture a bliss worth dying for.
Something to do with puppies,
I guess, or autopsying ice cream
from a carapace of butterscotch.
Or floating face-up in saltwater,
my grandfather’s hand
a pillar at my spine.
The Museum of Hospital Art
I swear I could spend weeks
in the Museum of Hospital Art.
I am not immune to the soothing
of a pelican descending at sunset.
Nor even to a lighthouse in graphite,
grayscale, Fresnel lens trained
south upon the isthmus.
I am not above a pastel brook.
I do not miss the shadows.
And I could practically live
in this Palliative Wing.
I get lost in the orbit of these murals.
I pace for hours in the glacial pines acrylic.
And I have learned to love the textiles
donated by the synagogue. I have
made peace with the tulips.
And I could spend the rest of my long life
in this one room in particular, mixed
media, a seasonal installation.
In this one room, this pageant
of wires and readymade Jell-O,
where Rachel Maddow plays on mute
and windchimes ring from the monitors.
I am a model in this room. I am on display.
A Polaroid portrait from my toddlerhood.
Elsewhere, I am older, accepting my diploma.
And I could stare forever,
this one forever night,
at this one forever sculpture,
cracked ceramic skin, a forearm
spackled in purple nebulae.
In its silent, abstract way, I swear
there is something it’s trying to say.
Afterlife
When you die,
you become money
and you become the things
that stand for money.
And the people you love
will be haunted by the
many-taloned ghost of your
money or – if your money
was goodly – swept from
danger in its dust cloud.
And when you come to
visit in their sleep or stupor,
you will speak to them
in the language of money,
which nobody speaks,
but everyone understands.
And when they find you,
dangled in some old
and mothballed closet,
they will hold your money
against their money, and
some new and hybrid money
will make itself matter
and make itself feeling
and in time become
a shade. A watermark,
your fossil. And grief
is the telltale clacking
of an abacus. And grief
is a séance by spreadsheet.
And when you are born,
you are money come back
to claim a body. Money
learning how to love.
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Anthony Immergluck is a poet, publishing professional, and musician with an MFA in Poetry from New York University – Paris. Originally from the Chicago area, he now lives in Madison, Wisconsin and works in academic publishing. His poems are featured in journals such as Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, TriQuarterly, Narrative, and Tahoma Literary Review.
“The Museum of Hospital Art” originally appeared in Blue Mountain Review. “Heroin, pt. 1” and “Afterlife” both originally appeared in Emrys Journal.